Three meditations on air travel
It's quite probable that we are not meant to fly; the clouds are above us, full stop, and any other arrangement amounts to grasping at perversities, which I am loathe to do. Moving quite rapidly above a blanket of cloud violates something fundamental (thankfully, not Bernoulli's principle) about nature. The vantage point lends itself to forbidden knowledge; the bowtie arrangement of cul-de-sacs in suburban Pennsylvania, the really remarkable number of ball fields in New Jersey: by what right am I observing this? Order isn't even restored upon landing, as you rocket on the ground at several hundred miles per hour, with the whooshing out your window whipping by like so many.
Aviation provides a thorough fucking; no other form of travel does you, but good, in all the dimensions. The two forming a tangent plane to the ground, yes, we're used to jumping through them in trains or fast cars (it's not the same in a slowly moving car or bike, as you [likely] participate more in the here-to-there, watching progress proceed at reasonable speeds out the window, etc.). But we don't get to traverse their orthogonal much outside of flight, and similarly we don't get to experience the acute dimensions quite like we do when making a sweeping turn in the air. Forgoing the comfortable confines of Euclid in a swiftly titling plane parallels the disconcertment involved in, say, stumbling drunk onto and into the pavement. And then there's that other dimension, through which we normally just plod along, but time zones and sonic speeds wreck chronological mischief as well. Had I any idea whence time is derived I'm sure I could point out some fuckage there too. If quantum theory is the fly in the ointment of classical mechanics, then air travel is the same to string theory: how can you believe anything about tiny nine dimensional strings of everything vibrating in a coherent manner after experiencing what a plane does to the lower four? How does this Delta change their equations?
I know I am not a plane, since when I place my head against the cabin's wall, as I'm doing now (well, not now; I'm in the subway coming home from Saryans now, but as I was doing when I so reflected), the vibrations resonate dangerously and I have to pull it away. No plane could withstand that with any frequency. That's how I know that I am not a plane.
Aviation provides a thorough fucking; no other form of travel does you, but good, in all the dimensions. The two forming a tangent plane to the ground, yes, we're used to jumping through them in trains or fast cars (it's not the same in a slowly moving car or bike, as you [likely] participate more in the here-to-there, watching progress proceed at reasonable speeds out the window, etc.). But we don't get to traverse their orthogonal much outside of flight, and similarly we don't get to experience the acute dimensions quite like we do when making a sweeping turn in the air. Forgoing the comfortable confines of Euclid in a swiftly titling plane parallels the disconcertment involved in, say, stumbling drunk onto and into the pavement. And then there's that other dimension, through which we normally just plod along, but time zones and sonic speeds wreck chronological mischief as well. Had I any idea whence time is derived I'm sure I could point out some fuckage there too. If quantum theory is the fly in the ointment of classical mechanics, then air travel is the same to string theory: how can you believe anything about tiny nine dimensional strings of everything vibrating in a coherent manner after experiencing what a plane does to the lower four? How does this Delta change their equations?
I know I am not a plane, since when I place my head against the cabin's wall, as I'm doing now (well, not now; I'm in the subway coming home from Saryans now, but as I was doing when I so reflected), the vibrations resonate dangerously and I have to pull it away. No plane could withstand that with any frequency. That's how I know that I am not a plane.
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